OIL
(Turn out the lights... the fossil fuel party's over.)

All of us depend upon oil. Everything we do involves oil.
I am typing this message and you are reading it using products
and energy that derive substantially from oil.

Here are some numbers:

world consumption in 2001: 77 million barrels per day
out of this, 5 million barrels per day were consumed
by OPEC countries. So, about 72 million barrels per day
were exported to the rest of us profligate consumers.

What do we pay for it: an average price might
be $20 per barrel: so 72 million barrels is $1.4 billion.
Per day.
Half a trillion dollars per year.
About as big as US defense budget.
And a lot of that budget is spent safeguarding oil sources.
By comparison, US GDP is 10 trillion, world GDP is $40 trillion.

So, we spend more that 1% of the world GDP on oil.
(Add in natural gas, we are well over 2%.)

But that does not take into account the other costs, one of
which might be all the carbon dioxide released when we burn
a great deal of the 72 million barrels.

And these numbers do not tell the whole story, for the world
economy is predicated on cheap oil. As in, Wal-Mart could not
afford to stock 70% Chinese goods, unless petroleum products were
cheap enough for them to ship goods across the globe...

Which leads me to my next point:
What do we use all that oil for?

Two thirds of oil goes toward transportation.
Natural gas consumption is about 2/3 of oil again, and
almost all of that goes into heat and electricity production.

So, more efficient transport, heating and electric
might be one way to look.